Monday, April 03, 2017

NaWriPoMo #2, #3, and #4 Sound, Attitude, and Autism

*wrote these all on April 2nd, but got them published here on blog after midnight---so April 3rd L Will try to improve that!
Today is Worldwide Autism Awareness Day. You can see my mixed feelings here as I tried to write into poetry how I feel about it.
The first poem I was trying for a snapshot of a typical day with my sweet son.
Poem number two was just a fleeting moment of irritation with my husband, but I turned that moment on its head to make a more general statement of how I really feel about him. (Least he think I am mad at him for any reason---not the case!)
Poem number three was another attempt to grasp how I feel about autism as a mother and someone that has lived in the culture for a while now. I was also trying to distill many recent conversations with my son into one poem---not sure I succeeded, but I did try.

A One Day Boy Cycle
Upon waking there is a series of slams
Your feet hitting the floor
The bedroom door hitting the wall
A toilet lid and seat lifted with a loathsome lurch
The lid dropped back into position after a slight pause
The bathroom door creaking open again
As you linger by another door to hear your parents
breathing for all of a few milliseconds
You slam their door with relish
A holler out to those you wish would wake up now
you gallop gleefully into the living room
Where you put up your feet
Extending your body on a worn out couch
There you pontificate
the subject of the day
Where you try to sway
Anyone that will listen
To the facts at hand
Are important, life altering
Points you must make
Or questions until
Those wonderful
Cows come home
Little moves you from
That spot or one jot or tittle
Of your arguments
Once you have rounded the corner
In your mind that
What you are saying
Is “the thing”
Oh, it is,
It is!
And it will be until
Nightfall turns a young man’s brain
To his bed once more
Maybe your thoughts
Are not off or gone
But lingering and winding down.
Certainly as you lecture yourself
Long into the night
Until exhaustion shuts
Your door all the way
Until the birds sing
You to wake
Making this loop
As instant replay tomorrow




Putting Anger to Bed
“Drop the ‘tude, Dude!”
Is what I want to scream
I say a polite “thanks”
And rush on
To be gone
Down the rabbit hole
I become a mole
Well into the night
Remembering what you said
Longing for bed
Turning out the light
Not wanting to fight
I pause,
Thanking for real
How I feel
About you
I whisper
“Forgive me?” instead
As I reach over our bed
Feeling for your big beating heart
Your steady breath
Calms me
I scoot closer
To know
You are near too

A Witness Speaks Up for Awesomeness
When I hear someone say
“Autism is awesome”
I squirm away
As much as I want to run to
I can’t seem to get there
As I live with someone
Who I think is awesome
But the autism moments
That are rough are not
In that category at all
For him or me
It is not glee
We think of when we notice
What makes these horrific
emotional traffic snarls
That burst through our lives
Clogging up the feeling freeway
Causing accidents that are so scary
It isn’t as nearly as fun as the statement
“Autism is awesome” sounds
But autism isn’t the enemy either,
As it is a part of the one I love so well
It is as if he fell, and is learning to not fall so much
But on his way of learning not to do the falling
He has discovered how to dance and fly simultaneously
He is filled with a sense of this new mode of moving
That I could never do as I am not autistic
I am just a person watching what he is doing
And calling it dancing while flying
As that is what I can relate it to
Even though, it is very much its own entirely new thing
All his
Forever his
The traffic jams and accidents
We hope will come less
And the flying dances more
As that is the awesome in autistic
His sweet beyond moments I witness
And cannot touch
While helping me soar
Though I don’t know what is in store




No comments: